Killing Eve, season 2, episode 1, review: Irresistible, murderous – Villanelle can’t return soon enough
The first season of post-modern spy caper Killing Eve was a deliciously transgressive high-wire act in which comedy and cruelty, farce and horror, exterior glamour and interior ugliness circled one another in mutual fascination. Could this dazzling feat of conjuring – of having your cake and also stabbing your cake in the femoral artery – be sustained as BBC America’s surprise hit reintroduced MI6 operative Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh) and her hit-woman nemesis Villanelle (Jodie Comer)?
There wasn’t much time to ponder with series two – which has yet to receive an official UK airdate – picking up 30 seconds after Eve had driven a blade into the object of her obsession in Villanelle’s Paris apartment. Down the stairs Eve dashed and off to the Eurostar, oblivious, in her shock, to the blood-stained knife in her pocket.
Her glamorous adversary also had plenty to be getting on with, given that she was bleeding out. While the numbed Eve binged on sweets (her candy-store snarl at an annoying child calling back to last year’s face-off between Villanelle and the little girl in the ice-cream parlour), the Russian assassin threw herself in front of a taxi and was off to hospital.
Fresh from defrocking viewers of their innocence – along with the “hot priest” of his – on Fleabag, producer and writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge has scarcely had an opportunity to draw breath before plunging once again into Killing Eve’s yin yang universe where comedy and terror exist in uneasy equilibrium. She does so as executive producer, with actress-turned-dramatist Emerald Fennell taking over as head writer.
Fennell’s biggest screen role to date was Nurse Patsy Mount in Call the Midwife and she will be seen on Netflix later in the year as a young Camilla Parker Bowles in The Crown. Neither of which have any bearing on her Killing Eve script. This was a Through the Looking-Glass take on James Bond and le Carré which had the sharpness and menacing glint of a scalpel.
Having ditched the incriminating blade in a Gare du Norde loo, Eve was soon back to London. There she quickly descended into a daze preparing a bridge-mending dinner for semi-estranged husband Niko (Owen McDonnell). Villanelle meanwhile, was still in Paris, where she woke in hospital alongside a shy young man who had lost half his face in an unrelated car-crash.
Killing Eve is adapted from the Codename Villanelle novels by Luke Jennings. But, as was the case last year, storyline was largely an afterthought. With utter predictability, Villanelle used her skills to escape the hospital (having helped sad Gabriel come to terms with his disfigurement in her own special way) and set off on the trail of Eve. And her quarry was of course brought back into the fold by spymaster Carolyn Martins (Fiona Shaw), the slippery MI6 boss who had sacked her star operative as Eve’s Villanelle fixation spiralled dangerously.
Just as contrived was the attempt to progress the plot by having Eve solve the death of a dot-com entrepreneur whom Martins had exhumed as a welcome home gift. It’s perfectly obvious that Villanelle bumped him off. The series was spinning its wheels in order to give Eve something to do.
But that was forgivable as Killing Eve made the most of its charming leads. Oh won a Golden Globe for her season one performance. She was once again irresistible as a flustered everywoman entangled in an international espionage conspiracy.
And Comer, who should have won a Golden Globe and every other award for which she was eligible, remained hypnotic as a chilling killing machine draped in couture ruffles of brutalised glamour. Everything else – the hazy plot, often thinly drawn supporting characters, an intrusive retro soundtrack – was irrelevant.
The other pertinent question, of course, is when UK audiences will have an opportunity to resume acquaintances with Waller-Bridge’s gallery of lethal weirdos. Last year, viewers here were required to click their heels for almost six months as this British-made and European-set thriller became the toast of American critics and audiences (that or watch it illegally online).
Second time around, Killing Eve has received a simultaneous worldwide release with the notable exception of its country of origin. However, with Jodie Comer due on the Graham Norton Show in mid-April, a UK air date is surely soon to be confirmed. What this deliriously bleak series opener confirms is that Killing Eve can’t come home quickly enough.